


Warmth

by Solas_is_an_egg (SeedsPlease)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek is a Good Alpha, M/M, set during S3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 20:36:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11425734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeedsPlease/pseuds/Solas_is_an_egg
Summary: It was on a late Friday night that Derek found Stiles standing on his doorstep. “Derek, I don’t know what’s happening to me.”Stiles finds himself turning to Derek for help when he can't tell what's real anymore.





	Warmth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hale-of-stiles-heart](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hale-of-stiles-heart).



It was on a late Friday night that Derek found Stiles standing on his doorstep. He’d been sitting out the front of his loft for a while, it seemed; legs curled up to his chin. 

As he approached the boy, he realised something was very wrong when Stiles refused to meet his eyes, despite undoubtedly knowing that Derek had arrived. 

He opened his mouth, still unsure what to say, but before he had the chance to speak, he was interrupted by a soft, uncharacteristic whisper.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me.” 

Derek made him hot chocolate. 

The boy curled into himself on the woollen couch- a house-warming present from Peter- and sipped gingerly from the mug. 

“I can’t remember last night,” he confessed, fingers shaking against the mug’s handle. “I remember going to pick up Chinese take out and then...it’s like I feel asleep or something. Next thing I knew, it was morning.” 

Derek listened carefully from his stool at the kitchen bench. His grocery bags lay discarded next to the fridge. 

“Has this happened before?” He asked, his words hesitant. The boy looked up at him sharply, eyes wide, and then he dropped his gaze back down to the floor. 

“I...don’t know,” Stiles confessed. “I...I might have. I probably wouldn’t be able to tell. Since the...the Nemeton, I’ve been all sorts of messed up, it would have been easy for this to happen and I would have just chalked it up to that.” He was quiet again for a moment. Derek noticed the boy’s hands were shaking. “I might’ve thought last night was the Nemeton again, if not for...the picture.” 

Derek frowned, but said nothing, waiting for the boy to elaborate. Stiles rummaged through his pocket while he spoke.

“I was checking my phone at school, trying to see if anyone had spoken to me last night, and I found this.” 

He pulled out his phone and held the screen out for Derek to see. To a stranger, it would look like a normal selfie. To someone- particularly a certain werewolf- who knew Stiles, it was something else altogether. It was a simple shot, out the front of a building (Derek thought it could have been the diner off the town’s highway) and it showed Stiles leaning against a wall. The boy was smiling, but it wasn’t Stiles’ smile; there was…  _ something  _ about it. Perhaps the eyes; there was something calculating about them, something about the way they were too narrow. Or perhaps it was the way his lips were too crinkled in the corners, too downturned. 

Or perhaps it was the way not-Stiles was waving at the camera.

Derek sat back, and watched the boy in front of him. 

“Why are you telling me this?” He asked, and the silent  _ “Why not Scott?”  _ was loud enough for the both of them to hear. 

“I...can’t tell him,” Stiles muttered. “My mother. She had a type of dementia and...I don’t know. What if it’s been passed on to me?” 

Derek breathed in sharply, struck a sudden panic and reminder of the frailty of humans. The key word _human_ gave him pause. 

“Peter told me he offered you the bite,” Derek admitted, and stared at the boy firmly. “Scott would be a better choice. He would help.”

Stiles stared at his feet. 

“I don’t know if I want him to.”

Derek didn’t really know why there was a dark pit expanding in his stomach. 

“You don’t want to be a werewolf?” He asked, after a beat. 

Stiles frowned, and picked at the skin by his nail.

“I want a choice,” he murmured. “I don’t want it to be a last resort.” 

The pit in his stomach went away. 

“I understand,” Derek said with a brusque nod. “But Scott would still want to know.”

The boy fell into silence again. He took a sip of the cooling hot chocolate, and let it calm him.

“He saw what my mother went through,” he began, and his voice was blank. “He was right next to me the first time my mother forgot my name.” His voice broke off, and it took him a moment to continue. “Scott wouldn’t want to wait for that...and I wouldn’t want him to worry.”

Derek’s eyes widened.

“You wouldn’t want him to  _ worry?” _ He repeated incredulously, but before he could continue, he noticed that the boy was shaking again. He frowned, more directed at himself than Stiles. “Stiles?”

“I don’t think it’s the dementia,” Stiles confessed, quieter than Derek had ever heard him before. The werewolf was silent, and let the boy’s words sink in. He continued. “I don’t...think it is. The picture; it looked like...it wasn’t dementia.” 

Derek wanted to say something, he did, but words failed him. That was a habit of his, it seemed.

“Whatever this is, Derek,” Stiles continued, looking up at him, “that picture was aimed at me. I was  _ supposed  _ to see it. Actions of dementia patients aren’t like this. There was a motive here.”

“Stiles…” 

“Whatever this is,  _ whoever  _ this is...they want me to know they’re there. They want me to know they’re toying with me.”

Derek was reminded of a time when he and Peter had ran through the woods during one of Derek’s first shifts. They’d found a deer, a young doe who’d been separated from its parents. The full moon got to them, and their predatory senses had taken over. They’d spent the evening chasing the doe through the woods, but never going in for the kill. They weren’t interested in eating it, they wanted the rush. The power. 

They wanted it to know they were there. That they were stronger. 

Stiles sighed, breaking him from his thoughts. 

“Or I could be paranoid,” he said, hands shaking again. “This could all be a symptom of the dementia at work, and I can’t tell. I...can’t tell anything.” He looked up suddenly at the werewolf across from him. “I don’t know what’s happening, Derek.”

If he was being honest, Derek didn’t know either. But there was a strange twinge in his mind, something that felt vaguely reminiscent of how he felt when he was an alpha and his betas were in danger. There was a pack mentality bond at work here. 

And he wanted to help.

“Go home, Stiles,” Derek answered, glancing at the clock which told him it was far too late at night for any decent planning to happen. “Go home and sleep...as best you can. You can come back tomorrow and...we can make a plan. We can even ask Peter for advice.”

Stiles grimaced at that, but when he looked at the werewolf, he noticed there was a crinkle of his lips. Derek was joking, he was making a joke, and it was for Stiles’ benefit. 

He’d be lying if he said that didn’t make a warm feeling flush through him.

“Hey, he’s old and sagely,” Stiles replied, with the slightest bite of his old humour. “He might offer something- at whatever twisted price he wants.” 

He rose to his feet and heard Derek chuckle at his words. He set the mug down and took a few steps towards the door.

“Stiles?”

The boy turned back around, and he inhaled sharply at the concern he saw in the werewolf’s eyes. It reminded him of the night in the pool, the way Derek had looked when he’d pushed him away from the kanima. He cared.

“It’s going to be…” Derek began, but cut himself off.

“ _ It’s going to be okay, Derek,” _ the voices ran through his head, memories of a time that smelt of ash, bitterness and strange, distant relatives who he’d never seen again. It was never going to be okay. 

“Whatever this is,” Derek tried again, staring at the boy who suddenly looked so young, “we’re going to fix this.” 

_ I’m going to fix this. _

Stiles was silent for a moment, before giving him a small smile.    
“I know,” was all he said. 

He turned and exited the loft, leaving Derek with the scent of fear and chilled hot chocolate. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed! This was my gift for hale-of-stiles-heart for the Sterek Summer Exchange.


End file.
